a resto shaman and "her sisters and her cousins and her aunts"

kamalia in pandaria

BTH plays WoW to raid, so the first thing we did was level our mains to 90. Leveling Monks, leveling Pandaren, all that would have to wait. Playing with BTH, I also knew that we’d be rushing from one quest to the next and that I’d barely have time to read the quest text, let alone look around… and somehow I still took over 3000 screenshots during the past week. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to doing Pandaria again with an alt, so I can take it slower.

Both BTH and I had to work on the 25th, so we weren’t able to get started until that evening. Even so, we made it to level 86 before we went to bed on Tuesday night. BTH took Wednesday off of work, and we got to level 88. BTH is in a level 25 guild with the associated +XP perks, and Kamalia is not, so on Thursday afternoon I ran some dungeons without him to get (mostly) caught up. We got to 89 on Thursday night, and on Friday night (really the wee hours of Saturday morning), we made it to 90.

After BTH dinged 90, but before I did, we got an invitation from some of his guildies to help them take down Ai-Li Skymirror.

I really like the appearance of the mail quest reward gear from the Jade Forest, the Jade Witch/Fox Grove set, although I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t actually jade green in color.
I didn’t continually re-Transmogrify my gear as I leveled, but now that I’m level 90, I’ll probably wear the Jade Witch set until I can get the Azure Serpent set completed.

No, child, but I can forgive you for thinking that I might be! We are cousins, of a sort, and I wish that we could befriend and help them, rather than seeing them soley as enemies.

I loved the variety of stories and quests in Pandaria, and I admit that I haven’t fully completed all the zones yet, but I’m also left wondering about certain events.

I became fond of Lorewalker Cho very quickly. I wonder what he says about the common ground shared by the Pandaren and other races? I’ll have to level some alts and find out!

Although I look forward to playing through Pandaria content with more characters, I’m a bit nervous about going through Jade Forest as Horde again. I got really hung up on the Jinyu in a Barrel quest. I’d get to the last step and get pulled out of the quest, but I wouldn’t have quest complete. After attempting it four or five times, I had to get BTH to play me through it. I guess I wasn’t shooting the guys in the last bit fast enough, or something.

After the destruction of her home, Kinevra retreated to Dalaran. I’d planned to leave her in Northrend until she’d become exalted with the Silver Covenant and obtained the Silver Covenant Hippogryph and Quel’dorei Steed. After playing through Pandaria as Horde, though, I’m curious to see the Alliance perspective — and get the Double Agent account achievement, to boot.

Aww, so cute!

Just how long did we spend in Halfhill waiting for Chen to brew his Emperor Stout? Shouldn’t I have been helping Farmer Yoon with his crops all that time? If so, then why don’t we have anything to show for it?

And how long did we spend with Master Bruised Paw learning how to smash bamboo and boards and stones? Surely it must have been a few weeks to a month at the shortest. I felt sorry for Lin Tenderpaw, that we upstart adventurers were progressing so much faster than she.

BTH said to me, as we were doing the quests in Rikkilea, “are these not Smurfs?” — and I had to agree with him!

So Garrosh is the face of hatred for members of the Alliance, and Varian is the face of hatred for members of the Horde? And Anduin is disturbed by his father appearing as the Spirit of Hatred for the Horde? Fascinating… I look forward to how this idea will be expanded upon in future patches.

When, exactly, did Taran Zhu become posessed by the Sha of Hatred? At first I thought that the storyline in Townlong Steppes would end with him becoming posessed, leading to the dungeon, but in the end, it seemed that we were hunting down and defeating the sha where it had flown after we exorcised it from him in the dungeon. Perhaps we did Kun-Lai Summit “out-of-order” — we went to Winter’s Blossom before we went to the Temple of the White Tiger — so was the hatred toward the Horde and Alliance that Taran Zhu expresses during the A Celestial Experience quest event (How can you see to remove the mote in your neighbor’s eye when you have a beam in your own?) what lead to his posession?

Where are the Mogu coming from? I thought the Pandaren and the other races had totally defeated and destroyed the Mogu, so where was and is the hidden population center that all these Mogu are suddenly reappearing from after all these millenia? Did they make like the Vrykul and put themselves into a hibernation from which the lowering of the mists has awakened them?

What is the relationship, if any, between the August Celestials of the Pandaren, the Ancients of the Kaldorei, and the Loa of the Trolls? It seems like all the regions of primordial Kalimdor had their own localized animal guardian spirits.

What is the relationship, if any, between the mantids, the silithids, and the nerubians?

The Horrid March in the Dread Wastes (and its projection past the Wall into the Valley of the Four Winds) reminds me very strongly of the Dead Scar in the Ghostlands (and Eversong Woods). Loon Mai speaks of watching “a bolt of dark energy” spike through the Dread Wastes and the Wall, and Apprentice Mirveda says “Such dark energy!” as she examines soil samples from the Dead Scar. Did Arthas manage to tap into the sha somehow as he was making his assault on Silvermoon?

Which came first for the mantids, the panic or the sha? Are the kypari trees dying because of the sha infection, or did the mantids become vulnerable to the Sha of Fear because the kypari trees were already dying?

So, these Klaxxi… I’m not sure how I feel about helping the Zerg.

Ahahahahaha! You haven’t seen our Priests in Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm!

Looking forward to seeing it from the Horde side but don’t know when that will be. Catwynn is stuck in Pet Battle mode so she’s only 86 and her only concern is being able to tame all the things in Pandaria, lol.

Heh. I decided very early on that I wasn’t particularly interested in Pet Battles, and seeing how everyone’s getting so involved in them, I think I’m glad I decided to ignore them — I’m getting distracted enough from gearing up for LFR by the Tillers, and I haven’t even gone out to visit the Anglers yet :P

There are a lot of cute pets that can only be obtained by capturing them in Pet Battles though….

Grats on 90 my friend! Like Ancient and Prinniedood I am of the MUST TAME ALL THINGS persona.

I have been doing some levelling but I have no idea what everyone else is talking about when talking about factions and rep. I’m just plodding my way through the Valley eyeing all those pets that I could be battling…

The Klaxxi/Mantid have a very interesting connection to pre-Mists lore/the other bugfolk that is revealed when you hit Exalted with them, a connection that sends some shivers down my spine! If you don’t want to wait, I think you can find it on WoW Insider if you go hunting for Klaxxi posts (there’s probably not that many?).